Count of Bellevue A Hero from Saint-Malo: Nicolas Beaugeard An Episode of the French Revolution By The Comte de Bellevue Rennes, France 1904 Translated by Gena R. Chattin (GRC – her footnotes marked with these initials) Edited by Llewellyn M. Toulmin, Ph.D., FRGS, FRSA of Silver Spring, Maryland (LMT) fifth great-grand nephew of Nicolas Beaugeard) FR. SIMON, RENNES 1 2 [PORTRAIT: In existence at the Chateau of Lemo] AN LITTLE-KNOWN HERO FROM SAINT-MALO NICOLAS-JOSEPH BEAUGEARD Secretary of the Orders to Queen Marie-Antoinette and to Madame the Duchess of Angouême, Captain of the Royal Army of Brittany 1755 to 1817 [birth and death dates] 3 Count of Bellvue A Hero from Saint-Malo It was the morning of January 21, 1793. Louis XVI had been condemned to death. Already they were leading toward the guillotine the descendant of nearly forty kings who, for fourteen centuries were succeeded on the French throne and had made that nation so powerful, so glorious, and so prosperous. Would the French indifferently witness that assassination and allow the best of men and the most paternal of kings to be bled white? Several loyal royalists resolved an attempt to prevent this crime and to tear the innocent victim away from his executioners. It was a gentleman, originating from Gascogne and then aged 33 years, the famous baron of Batz, who installed himself at the head of the movement. Along with his secretary, Jean-Louis Michel Devaux, the marquis of La Guiche, called “Sévignon”, Hyde de Neuville, the count of Allonville, and MM. De la Lézardière and Beaugeard, he orchestrated a plot with the intent to rescue the martyred king at gunpoint while he was being taken from the prison of the Temple to the scaffold. “The attack on the escort had to take place on the boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle, at the corner of the Rue de la Lune, and at the top of the Porte Saint-Denis; the number of streets opening into that area allowed the assailants to gather without being overly noticeable. “Four or five hundred intrepid royalists joyfully promised their help, but the extraordinary security and police measures taken by the Convention for the execution of the king were followed with such precision that only a few of the conspirators were able to meet at the point of the rendezvous. “In fact, from the crack of dawn on Monday, January 21, 1793, Paris was in a state of siege: all the streets meeting those that the ghastly procession would take were blocked and guarded militarily. All citizens were forbidden to appear in doors or windows or to be on the path of the condemned. All cries and demonstrations were forbidden under penalty of death. From the Temple to the boulevard, the street was adorned with more than ten thousand armed men, and each side of the boulevard was lined by a quadruple row of eighty thousand soldiers. Some canons were marched in front of the procession, which was made up of between twelve and fifteen thousand armed men. In front of the cart, where the king was chained, the clamor of a multitude of drums and trumpets rang out. Behind the car, surrounded by gendarmes on foot and on horseback, came yet more cannons. “At the moment when the cart arrived at the top of the port Saint-Denis, three young men and an older man with a sword in hand, opened a passage through the quadruple row of soldiers along the street and bolted toward the royal victim, crying loudly over and over, ‘To us who would save the king!’ 4 “Profiting from the stupor and the momentary disarray caused by their audacious attempt, the four heroes managed to slip into the crowd and get away by the neighboring streets. Only one of them was seized when he entered a house on the Rue de Cléry and sliced by swords on the steps of the church Notre Dame-de-Bonne-Nouvelle. The three others escaped successfully1.” Only two of the names of these four valiant royalists were preserved by history: those of the Baron of Batz and of Michel Devaux2; and we just claimed the honor for M. Beaugeard of having been the one who was “sliced by swords on the steps of the church of Notre Dame de Bonne-Nouvelle.” The glorious part M. Beaugeard took in that heroic attempt had not been revealed by any historian until recent times3: but this M. Beaugeard was Breton, Breton from Saint-Malo, and we have the duty to render all due honor to this valiant compatriot and to add a new halo to those of his family, of his native town, and of our Brittany. We are going to give all the details that we were able to gather on the family and life of this Breton hero, up until now too poorly known. The Beaugeard family was native to Saint-Malo, where it can be found as far back as the 15th century, and where it produced a great number of merchants and shipowners. It was linked to the Le Bretons toward 1540; Jalobert in 1563 and 1568; Girard in 1572; Maingard in 1576; Béchard toward 1595; Porée in 1600; Rouxel toward 1720; Fournier de Varennes toward 1740; Morin toward 1744; Avice in 1750; le Det de Segray [sic] in 1767; le Douarain de Lemo in 1771; le Provost de la Voltais in 1773; d’Hugues de Cessellès in 1780. It was ennobled in 1777 and received for arms: “red with a silver chevron, accompanied by twelve Ermine-spots in golden counter-ermine [NOTE: Explanation of ermine patterns can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ermine_%28heraldry%29 - GRC] arranged in groups of four in the form of three crosses.” We also find that, since the 17th century, in the lands of Vitré and of Fougères, the Beaugeards, who belonged, we believe, to another family, and had the arms “gold with a sand-colored prancing stag” [NOTE – not positive on sand-colored, would have to see the coat of arms to be sure]. 1 See: Dernières heures de Louis XVI, roi de France, written by the abbey Edgeworth de Fermont, his confessor, the day of the execution of the king, and published after Journal de Cléry, p. 123. – Les Défenseurs de Louis XVI, by Ed. Biré, p. 173 and following – Le baron de Batz, by G. le Notre, p. 6 and following; p. 279 and following; from which we have extracted in part the preceding lines – Les Archives nationals, w. 389, dossier 904. 2 Devaux was arrested June 2, 1794, and guillotined at Paris the following June 17. As for the Baron de Batz, we know his fate, so extraordinary that it was nearly romantic: Knight of Saint Louis in 1814, field marshal in 1815, he died in Le Puy-de-Dôme in 1822. 3 The first, M. Ed. Prampain, indicated M. Beaugeard’s act of devotion in his Saint-Malo historique published at Amiens in 1902 (p. 251). Since, the attention of the Malouins was attracted to the face of their heroic compatriot. In the meeting of September 26, 1903, M. E. Herpin, president of the historical and archaeological society of Saint-Malo, contributed some information on M. Beaugeard, who he rightly called “an unknown Malouin,” and that information brought about a letter from M. Fichet, in which that great-newphew of M. Beaugeard rectified certain information given by M. Herpin. That letter appeared in Le Salut of November 10, 1903, at the same time as a response from the distinguished president of the archaeological society of Saint-Malo, which recognized the validity of M. Fichet’s observations – A five- page article, signed by M. E. Herpin and concerning Beaugeard’s heroic act, also appeared in the November 1903 L’Hermine. 5 Nicolas-Joseph BEAUGEARD was born in Saint-Malo and was baptized in that town on April 18, 1755. He was the only son of Pierre-Marin Beaugeard, rich shipowner of Saint-Malo, secretary counsel of the king, elected Treasurer of the States of Britany in 1776 (and was the last), ennobled and named knight of the order of Saint-Michel, on the request of the States in November 1777, died in 1792 at the home of his daughter, Mme. le Provost de la Voltais, at the chateau de la Voltais in Monteneuf, and of Marguerite- Joséphine Avice, deceased at Saint-Malo on February 1, 1784. Nicolas-Joseph Beaugeard had as sisters Mme le Det de Segray [sic], le Dourain de Lemo, and le Provost de la Voltais1. In accordance with his father’s wishes, in 1780 he bought a post as secretary of the orders of the queen Marie-Antoinette in return for 200,000 francs, and he married Marie-Jeanne-Catherine d’Hugues de Cesselès at Paris in July 1780. She was the daughter of Jean-Antoine-Guillaume d’Hugues, who owned an important sugar refinery called Cesselès on the isle of Saint-Domingue in the parish of la Croix des Bouquets, jurisdiction of Port-au-Prince. She had as a sister Mme de Luppé. The d’Hugues family, native to Provence, had for arms: “Azure with a golden lion [NOTE: uncertain how to translate part of this, the language is strange and may be proprietary to heraldry, I am not sure - GRC] below three golden stars […??? – GRC]1.” Mme Beaugeard née d’Hugues was pretty and coquettish. She dilapidated her fortune and that of her husband, to who she only gave a daughter, Aglae-Marie Beaugeard, born in Paris in 1782, died unmarried at the chateau of La Voltais in September 1818.